Posted
by
timothy
on Sunday September 30, 2012 @08:29AM
from the persistent-virtual-worlds dept.

Hugh Pickens writes "Neal Ungerleider writes about PlaceRaider, a trojan that can run in the background of any phone running Android 2.3 or above, and is hidden in a photography app that gives PlaceRaider the necessary permissions to access the camera and upload images. Once installed, PlaceRaider quietly takes pictures at random that are tagged with the time, location, and orientation of the phone while muting the phone's shutter sound. Once pictures are taken, PlaceRaider uploads them to a central server where they are knitted together into a 3D model of the indoor location where the pics were taken. A malicious user can then browse this space looking for objects worth stealing and sensitive data such as credit card details, identity data or calender details that reveal when the user might be away. If a user's credit card, bank information, or personal information happen to be out in the open — all the better. — the software can identify financial data, bar codes, and QR codes. End users will also be able to get the full layout of a victim's office or room. The good news? PlaceRaider isn't out in the wild yet. The malware was built as an academic exercise by a team at Indiana University as a proof of concept to show the invasive potential of visual malware beyond simple photo or video uploads and demonstrate how to turn an individual's mobile device against himself (PDF), creating an advanced surveillance platform capable of reconstructing the user's physical environment for exploration and exploitation. 'The message is clear — this kind of malware is a clear and present danger. It's only a matter of time before this game of cat and mouse becomes more serious.'" As malware, it's spooky. But merely as software, this kind of intelligent 3-D imaging is something I'd like to be able to do with my phone.

They could probably simply solve this by making it take pictures at certain intervals and then only submit the ones that have reasonable light to the server. This could of course eat some processing power, so you may notice battery life decrease.If you gonna keep your phone in your pocket forever, fine, you won, but what use does it have?

Actually even that may not be enough. If you can have the locations figured out, that could possibly be enough to make a rough sketch of the house you live in. GPS and 3G l

If you gonna keep your phone in your pocket forever, fine, you won, but what use does it have?

While talking, you can just put your finger on the camera lens. When using it for something else, you can hold it in a way that your hand obscures the camera. And if you don't want to keep it in your pocket, just lay it on a flat surface. The main camera won't see anything, and the front camera will only see the ceiling.

Actually even that may not be enough. If you can have the locations figured out, that could possibly be enough to make a rough sketch of the house you live in. GPS and 3G locations, add them all together and you may be able to figure out the room layout, special locations like the toilet (even if you just want to annoy a person, figure out when he is on the toilet and then ring his doorbell), you could probably do a good guess on the bedroom (phone doesn't move for several hours?), kitchen (room repeatedly gone to around usual eating hours?).Among other things like when you are out of house often.

Being able to aggregate lots of data on lots of people at the same time would be very nice as a criminal/government.

Of course, location tracking is scary in and on itself, but it's nothing new. GPS doesn't usually work in buildings unless you're next to a giant window, but they've been doing cell location

You might want to use it and the sticky part of the tape will need cleaned off the lens if residue is left behind. Most tape that I use will leave a bit left over. It might be easier to find a phone protector sleeve that has a slide or something that covers the lens.

It gonna be hard to keep your hand on the lens at all time, you could make the phone recognize big moves that correspondent closely to being taken out of the pocket. From there you may be able to get a few pictures every time its taken out. Also using the mic to recognize when somebody is talking in it gonna give you a good idea on when its being used and thus out of the pocket.

I guess you could get some data that way, but I doubt it would be very much. All these things (constantly making photos, trying to get a GPS fix, reading sensor/mic data) will suck power like mad. If my phone's battery suddenly only lasts 3 or 4 hours, I'm going to investigate what's going on. Uninstall recently installed apps, look what background processes are running, do a factory reset if nothing helps. Less technically inclined people would probably ask their nerd friends for help or take it to a shop.

Yeah, my phone is probably at an angle where it could get a good picture through its rear camera maybe 1-2% of the day - the rest of the time it's facing a desk, a pocket, a dresser, etc. Now, its front camera could probably get reasonable shots for ~70%, but a lot of phones still don't have those, and of those shots, 95% of the day it'll be pointing at only 2-4 things - ceiling in my bedroom, ceiling in my office, etc. And of the time when there's good data visible to either camera, 80% of the time I'm

When talking on it, my relatively featureless "bar of soap" phone has a convenient hole for my pointer finger, that being the camera lens.

When doing something other than talking on it (99% of the time), you'd get an image of the palm of my hand. I would imagine an automated image analysis of hair distribution on palms of hands would be an interesting research project. (Ahh, I see, 99% of slashdotters have hair on palms, thus 1% of slashdotters are women...)

Is there a better solution? The only thing I can think of would be to review both the hardware and and all software, either yourself or by a trusted 3rd party. As long as you allow untrusted programs (including, potentially, firmware and OS) access to the camera or sensors, there's no way around this.

That's a new one. The pitiful multitasking support in iOS is an awesome malware-prevention feature!

Well, you have to realize that the reason multitasking is like it on iOS (despite being a full UNIX core) is because of battery life. Everything iOS does is keeping battery life in mind. Push notifications are there because polling is horrendously inefficient (it consumes CPU - which is very expensive when you're on a power budget, and that's not even if you're dragging the baseband up to perform something ove

That's just delusional. I know that you're trying to be the new Bonch, but there's no way that you're *that* irrational.

Your whole post reminds me of the "It's awesome that iOS can't multitask!" comments from a few years ago -- now it's "It's awesome that multitasking on iOS is second-rate! It makes our awesome piss-poor security less noticeable!"

Here's what would have happened had I given in to your absurd demand for evidence you can find on your own with a simple google search:

1) Spend 20-30 minutes putting together a write-up that covers a tiny part of the topic.2) Watch as you: 2a) Point out some aspect I didn't cover, covered insufficiently, or that you think you can argue convincingly against
2b) Argue, legitimately or illegitimately against each sentence in turn, in a long mutli-quoted post3) Spend 20

The difference between me and you: I back up what I say, and answer questions. You claim, then duck and dive when asked about them.

Imagine if I'd just stated that iOS was immune to this malware/spyware, and when challenged, I just said "you have to read more" then "Google it." That would be pathetic. But that's exactly what you've done with your RIM claim. And thus it's worthless.

Damn, you're thick! I explained why I wasn't going to bother writing a long post about this. As you're both argumentative and completely irrational, it looks like I made the right decision!

Again, there is plenty online that any idiot can find with a simple google search that makes my point for me.

Why are you afraid to read? Is it because you can argue irrationally against whatever I post to support my claim and thus ignore the facts but you can't do the same with other sources? You may be forced to con

Lets be clear here, as well as not backing up what you say, you're name calling, and despite me pointing out you've given no name or feature or technology to Google, you're making this ridiculous claim that the problem is I don't know how to use Google. You're the one behaving badly here. I've been completely straight in what I've said. Let's face it we both know that.

Let's be even more clear. You like RIM, and you know that RIM (like other mobile platforms) has some security mechanisms. And you're impresse

you don't know how to use a search engine....I guess you struggle with reading as well, yes?

And still you have nothing but ad-hominems.

We both know perfectly well why you won't back up what you say. Because although RIM OS has some security features, it has nothing which will prevent this sort of spyware. And because BB is your favourite platform, you don't want to admit it.

The answer is far more complicated than "My phone is too shitty to handle the app".

It would take a lot of effort to explain how security on the BB works to you (covering the two different major OSs) all so that you can completely ignore anything I had to say (as explained in my earlier post) I decided it wasn't worth my time. I was right.

You can do a google search and find out for yourself why BB is known for being the most secure mobile platform on the planet and why you won't find this kind of rouge sof

Apparently I don't need to. Your MO is that it's not necessary to back up what you say.

Oh, and it's nto a security feature that prevents this type of malware from running on iOS -- as I pointed out, it's their multitasking is just too damn weak to support it!It's the same reason that such spyware wouldn't work on DOS or Windows 3.1

Oh dear me. Your knowledge of DOS and Win 3.1 is as weak as your knowledge of iOS and BB OS. Of course DOS and Win 3.1 had no security, and malware could and did run in the background by using the TSR technique and latching on to IRQs. Were cameras common on computers of that time, this type of malware could very easily have existed on DOS and Win 3.1 machines. Educate yourself on the topic starting here:http://en.wikip [wikipedia.org]

Why you're still an idiot: They don't run in the background -- They terminate, but stay resident. You'd hook an interrupt and use that to transfer control to your program.

Even if they did, which they do not, it would need to be coded for a specific camera (no OS provided imaging API) assuming that the user had a camera (VERY unlikely. I can't even think of a camera from that era.) It's not just impossible -- it's impractical as well.

No, it's not. Do you even know how interrupts work? Apparently you don't!

Very well. Unlike you I have coded IRQ service routines. I've also coded for multicore systems that don't even have IRQs for that matter, so I've got the full range.Once again you're showing you don't know what you are talking about. You don't know how threads are implemented.

No, you'll sit motionless in one spot because according to the iOS 6 Maps app satellite photos your street has turned into a river of blood and the sidewalks are filled with shadows from a nuclear apocalypse.

But seriously, as much as the Apple's app store walled garden/prison is derided on slashdot, this is exactly the kind of thing it is supposed to prevent.

Researcher comes out with yet another bonafide [sic] security flaw on Android, and you make it yet another iHater Apple bash..

Oh. I see. When some Anonymous Coward posts, "Buy an iPhone." in a thread about Android phones, that's OK.

But if we respond to that specific comment with an (obviously) humorous comment about iPhone users taking themselves too seriously; that we're 'Childish.' and we're just (and I quote) "...sticking it to the 'Apple Man.'"

Well, thank you Apple user, for showing us how you, um, don't take yourself too seriously...

Because you'll drop it and break the fragile screen, rendering it useless before the malware could collect useful data? Because the battery will die too soon? Because you'll be getting rid of it to get the latest trendy model in short order?

Either Hugh Pickens didn't read the pdf or he is trying to intentionally misinform. A simple glance at the 1 Megapixel reconstruction shows that this would be impossible.

I actually think this is about getting Navy funding, because their entire premise - that people walk around pointing their phones at everything around them, is absurd. 99% of the pictures you would get from my phone would be useless, and consist of pic

Of course it's got military funding - there's more applications than I can think of, including plenty of military ones, they're probably using a malware application to attract publicity and therefore further funding sources and investors.

Take this for example - the military are currently experimenting with the Kinect as a robot-mounted device as a 3D room scanner and model builder (eg for storming an unfamiliar building). This gives them that ability in a far more compact, low-power package that can be

I'm always confused why none of the free/open projects have followed the path of extracting objects from video tracking vs photos. I've had pro software for years now that will pull a point cloud off a video. And because you can use frame comparison and use some minor manual tweaks to tell the software when any given point should be ignored for a couple frames it greatly reduces problems caused by shine, reflections and occlusion.

I'm always confused why none of the free/open projects have followed the path of extracting objects from video tracking vs photos. I've had pro software for years now that will pull a point cloud off a video.

I actually tried that with 123D Catch. I shot a continuous video around an object and then extracted a string of frames for use by 123D Catch.

What pro software are you using? I remember one that uses a printout with certain markers on it that you put under the object to help tracking.

To some degree a known reference would not be necessary. The camera knows how far away the object is by way of autofocus. If the object is far enough away that the focus goes to infinity, then you're SOL.

Many Android phones require root privilege to mute shutter sound...Some of them allows screenshot of camera preview without it...but not all of them...rooting methods usually differ from phone model to model, and becoming more and more advanced. Some phones have security features like custom LSM modules, NAND tamper checking on boot, or MDM tools built into the kernel. I wonder how this malware dodge this problem.

I could do without the random pictures and uploading to a rogue site, but I would like to ask that the part where it silences the fake shutter sound be released into the wild, and we all agree not to fix it. My I also request that this no-fake-sounds malware be extended to touch keyboards as well?

I've noticed a disturbing sharp turn to anachronism in the tech field lately. Its all about the camera shutter, the 5 1/4 inch floppy diskette as a "save" icon, animation of turning pages... Perhaps the next stupid fad will be an animatronic coo coo clock instead of hip hop ringtones. When the mp3 music player/streamer icon is an 8-track tape then we know its the end of the tech world.

What's the alternative? A sound of some kind can be very useful when taking a picture - making it unique is also useful, and it doesn't really matter if kids these days don't know the etymology. Ditto saving - it's pretty much an entirely abstract concept these days, but it still needs an icon.

I've noticed a disturbing sharp turn to anachronism in the tech field lately.

What's the alternative? A sound of some kind can be very useful when taking a picture - making it unique is also useful, and it doesn't really matter if kids these days don't know the etymology. Ditto saving - it's pretty much an entirely abstract concept these days, but it still needs an icon.

I've noticed a disturbing sharp turn to anachronism in the tech field lately.

FWIW, one of my friends back in HS (mid 80s) got a job doing some with with a company using Sun(?) workstations. We were both amazed that on such a power workstation, they would display an analog clock.

The radio(s), the screen, the touch surface, the camera(s), the speaker, the microphone, the buttons other than of course the "buttons on/off" button need to be either hardware controlled or controlled by immutable, bug-free software.

If I flip the "camera" switch to off, it should be off, and no software in the world should be able to turn it on.

If the phone has a master power off button or switch, turning it off should be pretty much like removing the battery except the "turn phone on" button would still work. Not even the "wake on alarm" or "wake on LAN" functions should work. If you need those functions, use the "regular" on/off button, not the "master on/off" button or switch.

Computers and other electronics should have similar on-off buttons. At a minimum, they should have a "master power" button and, typically, a "normal" on/off button. "Normal" being what we normally think of as "on/off" - most functions off but a few, like wake-on-certain-events, turned on.

If my phone is "on" I want the option to individually turn off the mic, speaker, radios, and cameras in a non-overrideable way.

If I'm in a museum or meeting, I'll hardware-mute the speaker and possibly the mic, camera, and radios if recording or radio transmission is not allowed in that museum or meeting. Why hardware-mute? To give the museum owner or meeting chair confidence that my device isn't compromised so he'll allow me to use it to look up locally-stored data and take written notes.

Security-minded businesses or governments may want their phones to include a separate computer in the phone that logs the time and, if available, GPS location any time the mic or camera is turned on and perhaps data relating to radio use, with the information stored in a place that the regular phone hardware and softare can't get to. This will provide evidence if an employee is accused of misusing his phone to record things he shouldn't be recording or, if the employee denies the act, evidence that the pho

"The Nokia 103 [intomobile.com] is dust resistant, comes with an âoeanti-scratch coverâ, has a 1.36 inch black and white display, flashlight, an FM radio (requires a headset), and an 800 mAh battery that should give you 27 days of standby time or 11 hours of talk time. Size and weight: 107.2 mm x 45.1 mm x 15.3 mm; 77 grams."

I like this kind of phones, but they might be too good for some countries. It is sad how hard it is to find a black and white phone (i.e. great visibility under direct sunlight) nowadays. I live in the UK and a while ago I was shopping for a Nokia 1200 (a similar phone). No way. I could only find 1208s (i.e. color display). At the end I had to buy it in Italy.

Street view should work something like this... send people a car docking station that takes pictures as they drive around. Use software to stitch pictures together. Pay them with App Store credit for pictures that end up part of the street view.

Have you seen how street view works?
Obviously not, AC. It uses a camera OUTSIDE of the car to take pictures of the entire range in view of the camera, including the sky. Your plan makes for terrible pictures through people dirty windshields.

I'm pretty sure you could get this through even Apple's curation, buy actually describing what it does and advertising it as a feature. "Build a model of your world" as you use your phone. Properly marketed, people will install anything. The only part you don't tell people is what you do with the images you create. This same abuse could be done by any app that uploads pictures to a hosted repository, the only new thing is that this takes the pictures at random.

Once you're over the wall, you have free reign over everything inside? This compared to the permission-based model used in eg. Android, where applications need explicit permission to access certain devices, services and data. Of course a 'root' user on both systems can do whatever they please. And, as can be seen from the paper, some of those permissions are to coarse-grained to be effective in stopping

This is not a matter of 'Apple' vs 'Android' vs the rest. They chose Android 'for practical reasons' ('We

This would be a fantasic app (without the rogue upload of course) if you could then ask it where items are. Arrive home without your credit card, lost your keys, need to find where you left a tool that you didn't put away 6 months ago?

This type of service could be particularly useful if packaged along with some anti-theft software. For example, services like Prey [preyproject.com] already take pictures using their application on the device, but if combined with the ability to create a 3D model of the environment this could be even more useful in tracking down your hardware's location.

Taking pictures in your private space may be embarrassing and may expose your mistress or illegal pot plants to the world, but as far as burglars go, it is irrelevant: they can tell easily whether your house is worth breaking into from the outside. And the idea that a bunch of dim-wit burglars are using poor quality 3D models to plan their heist wouldn't even fly as a movie plot.

This project strengthens the ludicrous idea in people's heads that photography is somehow a significant threat to safety or security. Photographic documentation is an extremely important part of modern democracy, and projects like these threaten the ability of people to take pictures.

The idea that the US and/or Israeli governments would write a virus specifically to have a subtle effect on computers running Iran's nuclear centrifuges is equally B-movie material. And yet with Stuxnet, it happened.

Now imagine how useful this malware would be if directed towards specific espionage targets.

Police and other agencies already can remotely enable the microphone on your cell phone; there's nothing to "imagine" there. They can do that bypassing the smartphone OS.

When it comes to the smartphone OS itself, they almost certainly can also install whatever they want already, because they can run man in the middle attacks on your phone and have access to private keys for software packages. "This" (as in the article) isn't relevant or new.

Their whole theoretical plan, assuming the part about the phone taking pictures of its surroundings and uploading them without the user noticing actually works, still sounds like nonsense to me, because there is likely to be little connection between the types of criminals who hack phones and the ones who break into houses and steal things.

If you are the type to break into houses and steal things, then you are probably focused on a relatively small geographical area - you need a connection to the type of cr

who saw the thread title, and clicked on it thinking it was going to be an extremely neat proof of concept that people would want to have running on their phones, to upload maps of places they've been to some central location, creating a crowdsourced repository of floorplans of every building on the planet? Cause that would actually be kinda cool. (Obviously you wouldn't post the actual -images-, preferably the phone would do the datacrunching itself, and just send processed data to be converted into floorp